Forward emails to multiple recipient – Google Apps

I came across a situation where I needed to forward all mails received by one mailbox user to multiple users. Google does provide an option to auto forward mails to another email address but unfortunately only one :-(. This gave me an opportunity to explore different possibilities.

For simplicity, lets create a scenario. You have an email user common@domain.com and you want the users u1@domain.com, u2@domain.com, u3@domain.com and u4@domain.com to receive copy of all mails sent to common@domain.com. Given the situation, below are few options one could explore :-

1. Configure common@domain.com email as another pop account. Login as u1. Go to Mail Settings -> Accounts -> Add a mail account to your own account (u1) and follow instructions. You will have to ask the user common@domain.com to give you the authentication code which is required by google. This is to prevent unwanted users from getting a copy of common@domain.com’s mails. Cons: This has to be done for each user.
2. Delete common@domain.com as email user and add as group. This has to be performed by your system administrator where he can login to the domain’s control panel and creates a group with name the ‘common’ name. While creating the group, make sure the permission level is set to “Team” and the option “Also allow anyone on the Internet to post messages” is selected. Once the group is created, add the users u1, u2, u3 & u4 to the group. Cons: There is no user with common@domain.com exists anymore and mails sent to common@domain.com are scattered with users (u1 – u4) mailboxes. If you want mails to common@domain.com to be at one place then this solution might not be what you would go for.
3. Set a forward rule to forward mails to group email account. Though this step is bit complex to setup, it is the best option I have explored so far. In the domain’s control panel, you start by creating a group (commongrp). Set the permission of the group to “Team” and add users u1, u2, u3, u4 & ‘common’ as members of this group. Later when you add commongrp@domain.com as the forward email address, google will try sending a mail to commongrp@domain.com with authentication code. If the user ‘common’ is not added to the group then he wont be able to send the mail with authentication code and you wont be able to verify the email address. For this reason, adding the user ‘common’ is very important here. Now log into user ‘common’ and navigate to Mail Settings -> Forwarding and POP/IMAP -> Add a forwarding address. Here you can enter the group email address, i.e, commongrp@domain.com. Now, login as any one of the other user, i.e., u1@domain.com. You should see a mail with confirmation code. Copy paste the confirmation code to verify the email address in the Forward and POP/IMAP setting. Now you are done. Any mails received by user ‘common’ will be forwarded to group email commongrp@domain.com which in-turn will be received by u1, u2, u3 and u4.

I hope this article provides a good work around to have mails forwarded to multiple accounts from a single mail account. If you face any difficulty, feel free to write to me.